Recording in Nashville

Hi everyone!

I know it�s been a long time since I�ve written, and for that I apologize. It certainly hasn�t been from lack of things to share with you! I can�t even remember what I wrote last time, or how caught up you are in Duhkland� here is an update of sorts.

I imagine I�ve told you all about recording in Nashville with Jay Joyce, and what a great experience it was during that time. Recording is always intense, and so it was a nice contrast to almost immediately hop on a cruise ship bound for the Carribean! As fun as it was to be there, it was somewhat comforting to tour the way we are used to � driving the American highway, playing almost every night, really exploring the new music. I say this all with nostalgia, it�s been that long ago�

Wintergrass was in there somewhere - the beautiful new music of Crooked Still still haunts me, and I�m really looking forward to their new record. Vassen, Mike Marshall and Darol Anger rocked the house big time � I felt like they were on everyone�s tongues � everytime I walked through the hotel lobby, that was all I heard people talking about! There was a very fun fiddle workshop early one morning, something like 5 fiddles (most of them 5-strings), one cellist, one banjo, one double bass and Aoife O�Donnovan. Lots of laughter and beautiful sounds emanated from that room, with Darol leading us down all sorts of strange and twisted paths�

After that wild and wicked weekend, we drove to Montana(!) to play a series of shows put on by our friends Sam & Abby at Porterhouse Productions, and then it was off to Australia. 3 weeks of beautiful sunshine, ocean and festivals was a great way to end such a long trip. The audiences were great and we finally felt at home, really at home, in the music, which is such a great feeling. We�ve taken a couple of weeks off at this point, and we�ve a couple more before we leave again, this time for Louisiana and Colorado, and we�re just in the process of approving the cover art for the record. It�s so interesting to see how someone whose medium is visual can interpret something purely auditory.

If you live in Louisiana, you have such a wealth of music around you all the time, but especially the weekend of the 25th, when both the New Orleans Jazz Fest and Festival International in Lafayette are taking place. We play the latter, and it is with great excitement and anticipation that we announce our double bill on Sunday night with the Redstick Ramblers at the Blue Moon Saloon! If you haven�t seen their music video yet, I highly recommend giving it a view here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slLJFBeq0TM

If you live in Boulder County, Colorado, you are lucky to have such great community that includes a fantastic house concert series hosted by Greg and Debbie Ching. We�ll be playing a couple of benefit concerts in Nederland to raise money for their house concert legal defense fund, and to raise money for our sustainability project, GreenDuhks. Greg is our Sustainability Coordinator, and he has done such fantastic work for us over the last year. We have made great progress, so much so that not only will our new record be printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink, but we�ll also be touring in a biodiesel van during the summer, in addition to recycling and eliminating plastic water bottles (to the best of our ability), which will make a huge difference to our environmental impact on tour. If you can�t make it to the concert, consider checking out the professionally recorded, mixed, and mastered FLAC download that will be made of the live show over both nights.

To get a CD-quality download of this post Earth Day concert, visit
http://greenduhks.com/index.php?page=shop&display=Benefit_Concerts before April 30 for a special 37% pre-order savings. You will hear a couple of our new songs!

We would love to film a short video describing The Duhks Sustainability Project. To get filming started, we are hoping 80 of you will purchase collectible original art Hatch prints that we will autograph. If you can help please visit: http://greenduhks.com/index.php?page=shop&display=Limited_Edition_Art_Posters

I know this has been a long letter, and I thank you for your patience! I�ll try to not let it go so long next time. Thank you so much for supporting us in what we love to do. We are so excited to share our new music with you, to meet you and hear your stories. We love the communities we are a part of, and will keep striving to make Sustainable Music for a Fast-Paced World for years to come.

Love, Tania